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B2B buyers are well-informed and armed with incisive questions by the time they start talking to salespeople. In other words, you’re only as good as your intel is. If a discovery call is the first time you try to think of an answer to a B2B buyer’s question, you’re already too late. Sales enablement tools can help you stay ahead, instead of playing an endless game of catch up with your prospects.

The importance of sales enablement tools cannot be overemphasized. The reason is that writing sales enablement content is a good first step but only if that content is put to good use.  In fact, 35% of B2B sales content goes unsued by sales teams.

That whitepaper from last year that nobody downloaded might be exactly the thing to push the buyer’s CTO from a skeptical “maybe” to a solid “yes” but the only way to get clued into that is through sales enablement tools that can flesh out sales enablement content you may already have.

What is sales enablement?

Sales enablement refers to the processes that provide sales teams with the knowledge, content, and other resources needed to sell more effectively and close deals at a higher rate.

In most organizations, sales and marketing share joint ownership of sales enablement. Marketing generates the resources that sales uses in their dealings with buyers, and sales in turn provides marketing with buyer feedback that informs content development.

This feedback loop is essential to a sales enablement strategy, which is the framework for producing the content sales needs and delivering it to their leads at the right time. A successful sales enablement strategy requires sales and marketing to be operating in unity.

Benefits of Sales Enablement for B2B

B2B buyers are frequently afflicted with content overload, especially the key decision-makers in the C-suites. They need to do research before committing to a big purchase, which usually requires consuming a lot of marketing and sales content. Unfortunately, much of it isn’t relevant to where they’re at in their purchasing journey. Sellers who can offer them the content they need at just the right time have the advantage. 

Sales enablement is how successful sellers thread that needle. Among sales teams who perform above their quotas, 65% have at least one person dedicated to managing sales enablement.

A sales enablement strategy can also accelerate the onboarding and training period for new salespeople, making it easier for them to tap into the resources they need to deepen their knowledge and connect with leads at every level in the sales funnel.

What are sales enablement tools, and why should you use them?

There are many software platforms designed to support sales enablement. The core function of these tools is to help sales representatives source the content their leads want to see, deliver it to them through the proper channels at the right time, and track how they engage with it. Most of these tools integrate with CRM platforms to leverage customer data, business intelligence, and AI-powered analytics to match individual leads with the content they will find most relevant.

These tools are essential to pulling off a winning sales enablement strategy. Best-in-class sales teams provided with the tools and resources for sales enablement meet or exceed their sales quotas 84% of the time. The right software tools save time and allow sales representatives to focus more on direct interactions with buyers that lead to deal closings. Of course, the right tools will vary for each organization and sales team.

Top 12 Sales Enablement Tools

1. Salesforce Sales Cloud

Salesforce is the biggest name in CRM. The platform includes various features for sales enablement with a nearly endless list of potential integrations to expand the possibilities further. Sales Cloud can handle the need to scale up and customize everything you can get your hands on.

It’s hard to argue with Salesforce’s ubiquity, but a reviewer sounds a note of caution: “There is a very steep learning curve as a new administrator. If you don’t understand relational databases and object-based programming, you’re in trouble.”

Pricing: Salesforce offers a free trial. The per-user rate for the Essentials plan is $25 per month, $75 for Professional, $150 for Enterprise, and $300 for Unlimited.

2. Oktopost

Social media can serve as both a rich source of leads and as a preferred communications channel for sales outreach. As a social media management platform for B2B, Oktopost enables sellers to maintain engaging and responsive presences on social media through social listening, native CRM integrations, robust analytics, and employee advocacy campaigns.

In addition, Oktopost’s uniqueness is in its ability to deliver social data straight into the CRM. With Oktopost, sales teams can see the social interactions and engagements their prospects perform right in their CRM profile allowing them to make better sales calls.

Users will appreciate their attentive support staff and appealing UI.

As one reviewer observes: “Unlike many social media management tools, Oktopost is oriented towards the needs of B2B companies, and the rollout of new features and capabilities seems to reflect this focus. This is particularly true for LinkedIn, where Oktopost seems to offer much better integration than many other vendors.”

Pricing: By request.

3. Highspot

Highspot is focused on training new sales representatives, coaching the current ones, and developing more effective sales enablement strategies. It uses insights driven by AI to guide representatives step-by-step through their sales approach. It includes a robust content organization system, but the UI and reporting features are less polished.

“Highspot informs us about the types of content we need and saves us from creating content that will just collect dust,” writes a satisfied user.

Pricing: By request.

4. Showell

Showell is designed to help sellers prepare, present, share, and track the content that is most likely to drive conversions. One notable feature is that it checks to ensure your content follows a consistent brand story. While it doesn’t have the same content creation tools that other platforms feature, Showell is intuitive and easy to use.

Reviewers like the portability of Showell’s mobile platform: “I like that it’s very easy to see data without having access to the internet. All the data we add is stored offline, and I can look it up on my iPad anytime.”

Pricing: There’s a free plan, a monthly Essential plan at $18 per user, and a Professional plan with pricing by request.

5. Membrain

Membrain helps businesses develop better sales cycle processes and optimize their strategies. To this end, it offers coaching to reinforce effective B2B sales tactics and an Account Growth feature designed to maximize the value of existing customers.

Users give Membrain high marks for being flexible and easy to customize, but there can be some friction with the reporting system and other technical aspects. “The separation between prospects and clients sold means tracing a single entity’s entire interactions with your brand is a difficult task,” one reviewer points out.

Pricing: Membrain offers multiple pricing options. The Full Suite package, not including add-ons or user accounts, is $179 per user, per month.

6. Showpad

Showpad uses machine learning technology to ensure that sales teams are fully prepared with the information and content to have the most productive conversations possible with leads. In addition to offering content management and tracking features, Showpad is simple to set up and responsive to user input and feature requests.

The long list of platforms Showpad can integrate gives it flexibility, but some reviewers have noted that it can have issues with buyers’ security settings. “The inability to navigate around strict firewalls was a major detriment for some of our users,” one writes.

Pricing: By request.

7. Seismic

Powered by AI, Seismic is a storytelling platform that includes many features with practical value, like compliance and risk management tools, social selling, and predictive content recommendations. It features a developer API that allows for considerable customization. Innovative content management tools and insightful analytics await those equipped to deal with Seismic’s somewhat steep setup and maintenance requirements.

“There is a lot of powerful functionality, so taking the time to learn it and keeping informed is important,” advises one reviewer.

Pricing: By request.

8. Hoopla

Another entry that isn’t a typical sales enablement solution, Hoopla aspires to drive productivity by motivating your team through gamification. You can set up contests, leaderboards, and even head-to-head competitions based on your CRM data metrics, with a live broadcast function to keep everyone on your network apprised of the action. Hoopla isn’t designed to handle all of your sales enablement needs, but it can be a good way to keep your team energized.

Of course, gamifying sales isn’t for every organization. As one reviewer notes, “It works well for a large sales team but maybe not as well for a smaller one.”

Pricing: By request.

9. Klue

Klue’s enables sales by giving you the inside scoop on your competition. This platform scours the internet for market insights while collecting all of the digital evidence your competitors leave behind through their onllne actions. Klue gathers data to create “battle cards” that give you at-a-glance pointers and context to inform your selling tactics. Klue is made for medium to large-size businesses and is priced accordingly. 

“The best part of Klue is the battle cards we produce for sales. These are easy to digest, easy to update, and have elevated how our representatives compete,” states a customer.

Pricing: By request.

10. Mediafly

Mediafly is designed to be a seamless end-to-end sales enablement platform. It helps sellers adapt to contemporary B2B purchasing practices by providing rich and detailed data on how leads interact with specific content. In addition to onboarding, coaching, analytics, and asset management features, Mediafly offers content creation tools for making unique interactive presentations.

“There’s a learning curve to get started, both for admins and users, and the menu and interface could be a little more intuitive in places,” suggests a reviewer.

Pricing: By request.

11. VoiceSage

This solution specializes in SMS-based mobile marketing. VoiceSage is all about improving the efficacy of reaching out to your leads through text messaging, with features like keyword response, reporting, and audit trails for legal compliance. VoiceSage also supports Rich Media Messaging, WhatsApp, and social media chat.

VoiceSage is a special-purpose sales enablement tool, but users find that it does the job. One writes, “This manages the inbound and outbound communication easily and will let the company save money and time.”

Pricing: By request.

12. Vendasta

Vendasta is a comprehensive, all-in-one platform that includes white-label ecommerce services and functions ranging from lead generation to site creation. Created as a solution for B2B companies who sell to local businesses, not every seller will require its full suite of features. However, their target audience will appreciate the way Vendasta combines sales enablement features with other essential elements of ecommerce. 

Vendasta can feel a little daunting to some reviewers: “The platform seems complex, and it is. There are a lot of backend integrations, automation, and notifications.”

Pricing: Starts at $97 per month at the Startup level, $575 for Growth, and $1,150 for Scale. There are prepayment discounts and a 14-day free trial offer.

In Sales, It’s Good to Be an Enabler

Salespeople do their best work — and bring in the most revenue — when they have everything they need to answer all the questions or concerns their prospects might have. Sales enablement tools are designed to ensure that they never come up empty-handed when they’re looking for relevant content that might seal the deal.

Social media is where you’ll find many potential customers and where they’ll prefer to hold their conversations. With that knowledge, B2B social media management becomes a critical component of any sales enablement strategy. The right social media management platform will help you track engagement and provide the perfectly-timed nurturing that turns your leads into customers.